HERO’S GOLD FROM MIND OVER MATTER

IN a few well-chosen words, Madison de Rozario has delivered a masterclass on overcoming adversity, staring down all that’s unfair in life and using that to advantage.

In doing so, the wheelchair athlete and Griffith business student has also revealed a philosophy on body image we should all embrace.

De Rozario’s attitude to her body is simple, but speaks volumes in a world obsessed by looks.

“I think the perfect body does and doesn’t exist,’’ she writes in a Commonwealth Games piece for the website PlayersVoice, explaining how hers might never be seen “socially’’ as beautiful.

At age 4, she was struck down with flu that developed into a rare auto-immune disease that attacked the fluid around her spinal cord.

The bright, bubbly and ballet-obsessed child was left a paraplegic, pushing her into a life of confronting challenges to find her niche eventually in athletics. By 2008, aged 14, she had reached world class and competed at the Beijing Olympics, returning home with a silver medal.

“... But if your body is doing everything that you need it to do, then I think it absolutely is the perfect body,’’ she adds.

De Rozario was robbed of her chance to compete in Glasgow four years ago when she developed deep-vein thrombosis on the flight over.

Since then she has competed at the Rio Paralympics, coming home with two silver medals, and is now enjoying her Gold Coast Commonwealth Games , having won gold in the T54 1500m. She is preparing for the wheelchair marathon on Sunday.

The Gold Coast’s story in boosting the profile of para-athletes and addressing issues such as accommodation and access does not stop with de Rozario.

Far from it.

Three-time Paralympic gold medallist and national hero Kurt Fearnley summed it up after finishing second in a thrilling Gold Coast Games T54 1500m final at the Carrara stadium this week.

“Inclusion’s working, we’re nailing this,’’ an emotional Fearnley said, and urged Australians to follow the example of these Games and apply what has been done for disabled athletes to everyday life, to education facilities, to transport and to employment. Fearnley will also compete in the marathon on Sunday. It will be his swan song event.

Games documents show the 38 medal events contested as para-sports on the Gold Coast are a 73 per cent increase on the number at Glasgow. There has also been a 45 per cent increase in the number of para-athletes across seven sports.

Putting aside an alarming shortfall in facilities for the disabled on trains built and imported to handle the crowds from Brisbane for these Games, what has been achieved for disabled athletes and spectators at sporting venues across the Gold Coast marks an important sport and social development.

With that “accessibility legacy’’, the Friendly Games can now be hailed too as the Inclusive Games.